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IMPACT CEO Eric Waterman announces retirement

Eric Waterman, CEO of the Ironworkers Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust (IMPACT), has announced that he will retire from the organization. Waterman has been the head of the labor-management group since its founding in 2003.

Kevin Hilton, currently Executive Assistant to the CEO, will succeed Waterman. Both Kevin and Eric are well-known to the TAUC community, as they worked for the organization and its predecessor, the National Erectors Association, for many years.

"It is my great honor to succeed Eric Waterman -- an icon in the construction industry," Hilton said. "As we charge headlong into the 21st century, it is my commitment to build upon Eric's innovation over the past nine years and continue to deliver stunning services to the entire Ironworker and Contractor community."

Waterman's departure is "both a sad time for our organization, and a transformative one as well as we welcome a new generation of visionary leadership," Ironworkers General President Walter Wise and William Brown, CEO of Ben Hur Construction Company, said in a joint statement. Wise and Brown are the co-chairs of the IMPACT Board of Trustees.

"I am excited that Eric will be able to reflect on his great accomplishments with the Iron Workers Union and IMPACT as he enjoys retirement," Wise said. "He has done an excellent job working with us to select a replacement, and we look forward to tapping into the new leader of IMPACT's energy and passion for the entire construction industry."

Brown noted, "Eric's work has had tremendous influence not only in the construction industry, but in the union industry as a whole, and his seminal ideas have led to the growth of a burgeoning labor-management movement. We are all grateful for his hard work and dedication."

"Working with our Board of Trustees and our Regional Advisory Boards (RAB) Executive Committees, and our staff team, I feel we have established a new way of doing business," Waterman said in his retirement letter. "We have established a new brand for the Ironworkers and the Contractors that employ them. We have begun to weave the Ironworkers and our Contractors into an inseparable joint venture with productivity, and training, and safety, and labor-management cooperative programs second to none!"

"I leave with the knowledge that we have a team and a staff that will take IMPACT to the next level," Waterman added. "I have not an ounce of doubt that for IMPACT, the Ironworkers and our Contractors, 'The Sky is the Limit!'"